


and here we are at last

by Iris_Duncan_72



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: But also, Character Study, Gen, I Made Myself Cry, Past Character Death, Transformation, but she doesn't die so im not tagging that, i guess, this is just me and my emotions, transcendence, vent fic, yennefer is very old and very tired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:47:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23527120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iris_Duncan_72/pseuds/Iris_Duncan_72
Summary: Yennefer moves on.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 16





	and here we are at last

_What are you willing to sacrifice? How much is too much? What do you want? Which do you want_ more? _Can you justify it?_

These are the questions that have plagued Yennefer since she was bought for four marks and brought to Aretuza to become a sorceress or die trying. She was young and angry and hurting then and she’d been prepared to trade anything for what she’d seen as the ultimate prize – beauty. Independence. Power. So she’d given up the ability to carry life in her womb, only to realise a few decades too late that perhaps she hadn’t been as prepared as she’d thought.

Well, she’s not so young anymore and the pain she feels is that of any conscious creature. It reminds her that she isn’t just formless power behind a perfectly sculpted face and wielded by elegant hands. Her anger has changed too. No longer does it run hot and scorching, magma filling her veins and ready to spill out at the slightest provocation. Now it lies deep, deep beneath the surface, so far down that some think her more ice than fire. She’s not even sure it’s anger anymore. It’s that and more, her hunger, her drive, the strength it takes to hold her head high and her spine upright even as centuries pass with the same impact on her life that single years once had.

Yennefer knows herself very well now and she’s made peace with all her parts. The polished, beautiful ones, the sharp, gleaming ones, the jagged, dark ones, the faded, soft ones. She is a court sorceress, a wandering witch, a witty, intelligent woman with a fiercely loving heart and an honest smile, a small girl uncertain of her place in the world, a murderer in velvet and lace, blood and flame dripping from her bare hands in equal measure.

She’s also frightfully bored. That’s about the last thing she ever expected to be. If anything, she thought she’d wind up dead a lot sooner than this, one way or another. That she hasn’t was at first surprising but now it’s just exhausting.

After all, she’s outlived everyone who once held a place of importance in her life. The White Wolf and his Songbird died hundreds of years ago, souls intertwined so tightly that they breathed their last at exactly the same time. They’d lasted longer than a human’s life, less than a witcher’s. Something about true love, no doubt. At the time, Yennefer had sobbed until she’d been sick (multiple times) but now she just wrinkles her nose in fond disgust at the sappiness of it. Tissaia, of course, fell at the hand of that horrendous bitch, Fringilla, shortly before Fringilla was brutally eviscerated by Yennefer herself. She’d cried for her teacher too, though not for quite as long, only fifty summers or so. And then there had been Triss, a cherished companion, a skilled alchemist and witch, and the woman to deepest plumb the depths of Yennefer’s vaulted heart. Triss, whose magic was not strong enough to protect her body and mind and spirit from the ravages of time as indefinitely as Yennefer’s still is. Triss, who only went into that final goodnight some three hundred years past and whom Yennefer yet mourns when the mornings are cold and bright.

Is there anyone she’s forgetting?

Oh, Ciri. Geralt’s Child Surprise, Yennefer’s sort-of protégé and sort-of adopted daughter and eventual friend. She of the pale eyes and paler hair, strong voice and stronger scream. Yes, Ciri had left a considerable mark on Yennefer’s life when her butterfly life had drawn to a close. That was even longer ago than Geralt and Jaskier though and of all the scars Yennefer carries on her heart, this one is perhaps the least painful.

There have been a handful of individuals over the centuries who earned her affection and loyalty but none so fiercely as those she met in that first century. Now Yennefer is all that remains. The world has changed so very much over the course of her life and she has devoted herself to every possible pursuit, whether noble or depraved or kind or selfish or neutral.

And still, she finds herself alone. This is not the horror it once was but she is ready to be done with it, ready to move on. There is nothing for her here anymore.

When first Yennefer felt these restless stirrings within herself, she thought perhaps it was her time to shed her mortal skin and join her loved ones at last, but the world had whispered to her through the patter of rain on her skin and wind in her hair that this was not so. Daffodils, purple elderflowers, black carnations, king sugarbushes had all sprung up in her path no matter where she walked, no matter how unfriendly a climate, and she had accepted them for what they were.

Harbingers of change, transformation, rebirth.

Yennefer stands at the edge of a precipice of black rock, overlooking an immense underground lake. She is beneath the roots of a mountain and the roof of this endless cavern is so high that she cannot make it out. There is no light here, natural or magical, but as she doesn’t need it to see, that’s not a problem. She simply waits in the quiet and the dark with a patience that has been millennia in the making. This is where the flowers have led her, a pristine row of gently bobbing daffodils lining her path down into the mountain’s depths, so this is where she will stay until her new purpose is presented to her.

There is a light prickling sensation over every inch of her skin, covered by her red dress or not, and she knows the moment has come. The air around her becomes weighty with the presence of something it struggles to contain, the waters of the lake stirring and sloshing far below. She is not afraid.

 _Yennefer the Eternal,_ murmurs a voice that is an echo of the voices of everyone she has ever loved thread together.

‘I am she,’ Yennefer replies calmly, though her heart aches to hear them all again. ‘What is your business with me?’

A rippling whisper of laughter, Geralt’s and Ciri’s and Triss’s and Jaskier’s and Tissaia’s and – _We have long waited for you to be ready. Now you are so. Will you step forth and progress boldly along your path?_

She has no idea what that might entail or if this... entity is even vaguely trustworthy but Yennefer is of the very firm opinion that it doesn’t matter. This being, this offer, it is beyond all of that. It is beyond everything she has ever been, everything she has ever wished to be. It is why she has lived so long despite the exhausting effort it has taken. It hums in her core where once lay anger and hunger and now exists only an overwhelming sense of _self_. It could not be described as confidence or serenity or purpose, though it encapsulates those things too.

Yennefer wonders fleetingly if this entity is her an eon from now but the thought falls swiftly aside, irrelevant.

‘Yes,’ she answers.

_Then come, for this plane is of no use to you now._

So she steps out into thin air and isn’t surprised when the air proves to be not so thin. She walks until the entity surrounds her, humming and tingling and buzzing and _glowing_ so deep inside. Water laps at the soles of her feet and she is not afraid. Acting on instinct, she extends her arms out wide as though to gather all the sensations about her in her embrace. At once, she feels herself firmly hugged back by her loved ones, feeling their skin press against hers, smelling their scents in her nose, hearing the susurration of their hair and clothes shifting.

Yennefer would weep but she smiles with joy instead, for she knows she is loved and that is only a cause for gladness.

‘I love you,’ she says.

 _We know,_ they reply, a thousand whispers holding her safe though she has not needed another’s protection in so very long.

And then the air shudders and Destiny screams as the universe acts decisively and Yennefer of Vengerberg is no more.

**Author's Note:**

> please :) comment :) okay :)


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